


fatherhood, again

by Anonymous



Series: bearing [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Childbirth, Fluff, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force-Sensitive Din Djarin, Gen, Mpreg, Parenthood, Pregnancy, That's Not How The Force Works (Star Wars), Trans Din Djarin, Trans Male Character, din wants a baby and the force gives him one!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:20:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28239096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Din gives Grogu up, and the Force repays his sacrifice.
Series: bearing [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2147220
Comments: 30
Kudos: 335
Collections: Anonymous





	fatherhood, again

Din gives his son up, while every part of his body is screaming at him not to. He lets Grogu go, and wishes that he hadn’t. Now, it hurts. A gnawing pain that’s sitting deep, right there just below his ribs. As if he’s just given up a child he bore and nursed with his own body. His heart hammers madly in his chest, and he presses a hand to his upper belly. He grits his teeth, and tries to will the ache away. Some deep, long-buried part of him had been let loose during the past few months. He aches for his child. His body feels strange, and empty. 

He’s wanted children his whole life, but as the years had stretched on he’d accepted that it probably wouldn’t happen for him. His job, his responsibilities to the Covert - they all prevented it. In the years before Grogu came into his life, he debated going to one of the donor banks and taking matters into his own hands, but there was never enough time. So now, here he is. Alone again. 

* * *

He first feels it when he’s navigating a stretch of the old Kessel Run. It’s nothing more than a slight tingle in the pit of his belly, and he shifts in his chair to try and get rid of the feeling. He hasn’t eaten properly in a few days, and by now his body is used to periods of intermittent hunger. When he’d had Grogu with him, he’d made an effort to eat properly as a way of setting an example. Now though, his child is gone, and it has been all too easy to fall back into his old ways. 

That night, he lies back in his bunk and lets his hands roam. Over the scars on his chest, long faded to thin silver threads. Then lower, over his stomach. The feeling is still there, deep in the place where it would ache when he used to bleed. This isn’t a pain though. More of a feeling of newness, something foreign but unthreatening. 

A thought comes to him, terrifying and unbidden. _No._ That’s impossible. 

* * *

Impossible, it turns out, turns out to be entirely possible. Around a week after the strange feeling had set in, Din had begun to feel sick. Then that had progressed to being sick, with no apparent cause. Sometimes he’d be staking out a target, and he’d have to duck down an alley to get his helmet off in the nick of time. Other times, he’d be sitting there in the cockpit, and barely make it to the vac before he was hurling up everything he’d eaten a few hours prior. 

When he starts debating the merits of wasting an entire tank of fuel to head back to Hosnian Prime to pick up some pickled Karraghlan chilies, he realises that the thought that had come to him a fortnight earlier might have some ground.

How though, is the question. He hasn’t- not for a long time. Not since before he took Grogu in. There had been Vanth and an almost but not-quite something, but certainly not enough to get him, well. Knocked up, for want of a better phrase. 

* * *

He looks down at his flat belly. The strange feeling has changed over the past few weeks. Where before it had been a tingling, it’s now a warmth. A solid, constant warmth. 

He’s clearly going mad. He’s entertaining the possibility that he might be pregnant after not having sex with anyone for, well, _eons._ He should be panicking. This is another level of strange, and Din has become very well-acquainted with strangeness these past few months. 

That night, he dreams. He dreams of a white light, an all-encompassing warmth. He dreams of himself, round-bellied and thrumming with, with- 

Ahsoka had spoken of the Force. Somehow, Din recognises it. 

He dreams of Grogu’s little hand on his face, and for the first time in months, he doesn’t feel empty. Even here, within the confines of his dream, he recognises what is happening. A child lost, and now a child given. Life growing within him. _I’m not letting you go,_ he says to Grogu. In his dream, he’s balanced on Din’s knee. Din runs a hand over his head, feeling the soft downy hairs and following the shape of his ears. _I didn’t want to replace you. I’d never wish for that._

Grogu coos, and Din knows that he has heard him. He could be a million light years away, but he has heard him. 

* * *

He buys a test on Dantooine, although he suspects that it’s pointless doing so. Every part of his body is telling him what’s happening - and being Mandalorian meant trusting your body. Listening to what it tells you. 

Still, he takes the test. He sits there in a public fresher stall, and waits. When it bleeps, and the words **_POSITIVE, 9.5 WEEKS PREGNANT_ **flash up on the screen, his stomach does a little flip. 

_Hi,_ he thinks, directing the thought down, down into the deepest and now most precious part of himself. The warm feeling grows, and Din’s eyes are suddenly wet. 

He’s going to have a baby. 

* * *

Fett calls him at somewhere along the three-month mark. “Got a job for you,” he says by way of greeting. “Tatooine, if you’re in the sector.” 

Din isn’t in the sector, but he’s not far from it. A day or so at lightspeed and he could be there. He sits back in his chair, and weighs everything up in his mind. “If I said that was going off-grid for the next, say six months, what would you say?” he asks Fett. 

“That you were about to be slapped with a jail sentence,” Fett says. 

Din laughs. “This line secure?” he asks. 

“Absolutely.” 

Din tells him. It really does feel real then.

* * *

He thinks that he's going to get away with not showing much, but his body has other ideas. It starts as a barely-there curve between his hipbones, something that doesn’t even warrant a second glance once he’s wearing his armour. Then, as days become weeks, his belly rounds out, the shape of it growing more pronounced. At first he looks like he's just been overeating, but it soon becomes obvious that he’s carrying a child. When he’s picking up supplies in a market on Cato Neimoidia, an old woman looks at him. “First time, huh?” she says. 

Din’s hand goes to his stomach reflexively. “Wh-,” and then he relaxes, realising that she means him no harm. “Oh. Yes.”

“Little one giving you grief?” she asks. “How's your sickness?”

“Rough,” he says. Just last night, he’d spent an hour throwing up after three days of thinking he was over that phase. He’s spent the whole of this morning feeling vaguely nauseous, unable to entertain the thought of eating. 

“Try Carnellian tea,” the old lady says. “It helped me when I was going through it.” 

“Thanks,” Din says.

He buys the tea, which also makes him realise that he’s bought nothing in the way of supplies for the baby when it arrives. So he picks up some blankets, long-life formula feed, cloth diapers, and some clothes that seem improbably tiny. He stuffs everything in the bag at his hip, the bag that he used to carry Grogu around in. 

When he gets back to the ship, he makes the tea. The old woman was right. It does work. 

* * *

Around month five, two things happen. He feels the baby move for the first time - and that’s strange. Like something is fluttering inside him. Stranger though, is the feeling of, well, _feeling_ the child. He starts to catch snatches of emotions that aren’t his, little flashes of _happy_ and _warm_ and _safe._ When he pushes himself a little too hard on a job in Canto Bight, a wave of _fear_ and _hurt_ washes over him. 

He doesn’t know if it’s the mysterious workings of the Force, but he takes comfort in the fact that his child seems to be able to communicate with him. He tries to do it back, tries to convey his thoughts and feelings with his mind. Eventually, they seem to settle into it, a wordless back and forth. Din moves, the child moves, and they know each other. 

* * *

At some point at what he assumes is the six month mark he feels like he’s getting bigger by the minute. He has to buy new clothes when his flight suit just won’t fasten any more, and getting his feet into his boots starts to become a struggle around month seven. His back aches. His hips ache. Getting up out of a chair starts to become something of an operation. 

He feels excited, and terrified. He misses Grogu, and wishes that he were here with him, getting ready to meet his sibling. It's because of giving up Grogu that this is happening though. Cause, effect. The baby kicks, as if it can sense the whorl of his thoughts. _Hey,_ Din says inside his own head. _You hear all of that?_

The baby moves as if in response, an easy stretch that feels something like _sure I did._

* * *

He sits there in his bunk, a hand pressed to the curve of his belly. He presses down slightly, and is rewarded with a kick against his palm. 

There’s _really_ no denying that he’s pregnant now. Even shielded by the armour and a strategic drape of his cape, there’s no hiding it. Hiding it isn’t even the issue really. Moving with grace is a long-forgotten thing. The only thing he can do now is shoot a blaster. So now is the time to stop chasing bounties. He’s worked enough and suffered through enough sleepless nights to take it a little easier now for these last few weeks. He can set the ship to drift through hyperspace with a few strategic stops for food and fuel along the way. 

The child moves within him, a firm pressure nudging up against his lungs. He lifts his shirt and watches his swollen belly move, like there’s a wave rolling beneath his skin. He feels something like warmth and contentment radiating from the child, and runs his hand back and forth over his stretched, shifting skin. 

_I’ll be seeing you soon,_ he thinks, and something formless, a word without shape, is given back to him in response. It feels a lot like love. 

* * *

With no real date of conception to go from, Din is using guesswork more than anything. It’s been just over nine months since he felt that tingling in the pit of his belly - the Force taking root. So now he waits. The weight of the child sits lower within him now, right in the cradle of his hips. Sleep is something that's long forgotten to him - he's huge, and getting comfortable in his narrow bunk is nothing short of impossible. Add to the fact that the baby seems to be bouncing around on his bladder, and there's no point even trying to settle down. He spends his nights walking the length of the galley instead, over and over, his hands rubbing at the ever-present soreness in the small of his back. His child moves all the while, clearly just as eager to see in their birthday. 

Still, even though he can't see his feet most of the time, even though he's slow and ungainly - he's going to miss this. The closeness. He's never felt less lonely in his life. He doesn't know if this connection that he and the child share will remain once he's given birth. He hopes so. He likes the warm presence of their emotions against his own. So, despite being so uncomfortable, despite the swollen ankles and the ever-present heartburn, he makes the most of these last few days of being pregnant. He listens to music, and the baby has a _very_ energetic response to some experimental Wookiee opera. He probably won't be playing that at bedtime then. He cooks batches of food and freezes them, mindful of the fact he probably won't have the energy or time to make himself anything to eat in the coming weeks. Most of the time he just talks to his baby. He tells them stories, and feels their contentment radiate through his body.

* * *

When the time comes, he has a foot on the bottom rung of the cockpit ladder. He doesn’t know _how_ he knows, but the magic that’s been coursing through him for three-quarters of a cycle suddenly feels ready to spill forth. He presses a hand to his belly, to the lowest part of the swell. His muscles draw up as taut as a drum underneath the spread of his palm, and he closes his eyes. He can do this. He can. He climbs up into the cockpit, and lays out the towels he'd set aside for this. When his waters break about twenty minutes later, he's very glad that he did. 

He spends a long time pacing back and forth, walking through the contractions as they roll into him. When they start to get stronger, he grips the back of the pilot's chair and rocks his hips in slow circles. 

When walking and rocking back and forth become too much of an effort, he crouches on the floor, hands braced against the hull of the cockpit, and breathes. It turns out that childbirth is something beyond pain. It’s a pressure that comes in waves and grips at him, making him gasp. His thighs shake, and his fingers flex against smooth, unyielding metal. When the pressure reaches an unbearable peak, he can’t help but groan.

After hours of this, he starts to bear down. Over and over, slave to his body’s will. He doesn’t really care how much noise he’s making now. He doesn’t care that he’s half-naked, crouched on the floor of the cockpit. He runs a hand through his hair, and it’s soaked through with sweat. He grits his teeth.

The minutes pass, and he reaches down between his legs, where the pressure is heaviest. He laughs - because there against the spread of his palm, right there, is proof that the last few months haven’t been some prolonged spice dream. He is bringing a child into the galaxy. He’s cradling their head in his hand, guiding them from the safe world that is his body to the great unknown.

He rearranges himself before the pressure seizes him again, to make it easier for him to catch the baby. Then his stomach tightens, his back pulling so taut he cries out from the force of it. He grips his thighs and pushes, yelling louder than he ever has in his life - and it’s done. There is a tiny, wriggling baby in his hands, and it’s done. 

For a moment, he and the baby do nothing more than look at each other, eyes wide and searching. She - and it’s a girl, a girl! - looks like him, Din thinks. A shock of dark, unruly hair and brown eyes. Then his daughter opens her mouth and wails. 

* * *

The next few days are a blur. He’s tired and sore, and he barely leaves his bunk. His daughter sleeps, and feeds, and curls up against his bare chest. She grips at his fingers with her little hands. His whole world shifts, and she is at the very centre of it. 

His daughter is nothing like Grogu. She doesn’t eat frogs, for a start - although Din wouldn’t even question the stars if that was something that happened further down the line. After all, he's just lived through nine months of carrying a child that he had no intention of even conceiving. It’s pretty much impossible to surprise him now. 

Where Grogu was quiet for the most part, his daughter is determined to use her voice. She screams with a power that shouldn’t be possible for a being so tiny, and Din spends night after night walking the galley. He thinks back to when he was still pregnant, barely a week ago. How he would spend entire nights, her kicking too strong to sleep through, doing exactly the same. Walking, and walking. 

His daughter is strong-willed and forged by magic, and he loves her so much it sometimes makes his breath catch. 

* * *

“Well,” Fett says. “Let’s have a look at her.” Din unfastens the sling and cradles his daughter. She’s sleeping - has been ever since they touched down on Tatooine. He passes her over to Fett, who grins. “Little one,” he says. “You sent your _buir_ off on quite the detour, didn’t you?”

“Sorry I went dark,” Din says. He ruffles his daughter’s hair, and she coos. “But I would have been useless for any jobs anyway. I don’t think I would have been able to get on and off a speeder at the end.” 

Fett laughs. “Well, you seem like yourself again,” he says. “You looking for work?”

“Not yet,” Din says. “I wanted her to meet some of her kind, and you-”

“Have a lot of stories I’m going to tell her as she grows up,” Fett says. He looks at Din, and he can feel the weight of the gaze even through the helmet. “Still. There’s something you want.” 

“I need to track down a Jedi,” Din says. “I want this one to meet her brother.” 

His daughter, brand new and still nameless, opens her eyes. _Brother,_ Din says in his head. _Family._

His daughter is happy. He can feel it. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!


End file.
